Newsom: Not pro-transit

First, a little context. Faced with a massive shortfall, the transit agency has proposed its most draconian service cuts in history, combined with still more fare hikes. SFMTA has insisted on making the cuts, at least temporarily, even after the agency received windfall money from the state.

The current budget battle comes after a hard-fought budget and painful fare hikes a year ago. More cuts and fare hikes lead to fewer riders, which lead to more cuts and fare hikes: TGL is not the only (though it is, ahem, the first) news source to refer to Muni’s current route as a “death spiral.” On the other hand, making transit better benefits everybody by reducing traffic and giving drivers more options.

During last year’s debate over Muni’s budget, many raised the point that transit riders were shouldering four times as much of city’s shortfall in transportation funding as drivers. Which hardly seems fair since transit riders are generally poorer and drivers can always take the bus, whereas bus riders in many cases don’t own cars. The Board of Supervisors finally okayed hits to Muni with the understanding that the transit agency would look seriously at raising parking prices to fix the budget in the future.

But in October, the mayor bailed. At that time, then-communications director Nathan Ballard told Streetsblog that “The Mayor thinks it’s the wrong time to make these moves. Right now, with the economy where it is, the burden on ordinary people for city services is already stretched to the max.” (By “ordinary people,” Newsom evidently meant people rich enough to drive cars.)

Without real leadership, the already failing transit system will continue to fail. Slower buses cost more than faster buses. Emptier buses cost more than fuller buses. Somebody has to stop the death spiral, and Newsom is MIA.

So it’s no surprise that we’re here again, a year later. Despite two studies, one conducted by the SFMTA itself documenting that extending meter hours to Sundays and possibly weekday evenings, would be a good idea and even helps business, extended metering hours are again missing from budget proposals.

According to several recent reports on SF Streetsblog, the mayor’s office is to blame. (The board of SFMTA is hand-picked by the mayor and serves at his pleasure.)

And then there was the article in SFWeekly, which blamed both the union and the mayor alike. It described the mayor’s role in budgeting this way:

Now more than ever, the agency is an extension of the mayor’s office, which stands by as other city departments siphon millions of dollars from Muni’s budget — compounding huge cuts in state funds. Multiple sources confirmed to SF Weekly that not only does Mayor Gavin Newsom’s office dictate the agency’s budget down to the line item, it also demands Muni fudge its fiscal shortfalls into “politically palatable” deficits.

I decided to ask the mayor’s office directly: Does the mayor, or does he not, support extended metering hours? The response I got (after repeated phone calls and wrapped in vitriol) was that Mr. Newsom supports an opt-in program for Sunday metering, in which each supervisor decides whether or not his or her district will participate in the program.

For me, this was the nail in the coffin. You call this leadership? It’s an embarrassing abdication of leadership, plain and simple. Metering hours would vary across the city, making it harder for drivers to follow the rules. And, by requiring opt-in, the mayor is basically putting a sign on every meter in the city that says, “Angry about longer meter hours? Blame your supervisor (not the mayor)!” Not to mention that an opt-in program doesn’t guarantee that a single quarter will go into Muni’s coffers.

Newsom loves to soak up the limelight for San Francisco’s green initiatives, but behind the scenes, he appears to be busy trying to curry favor with drivers at the expense of everybody else — probably in the name of a political future in a larger stage, despite the fact this his prospects look ever-more doomed to fail. What’s so bizarre is that he seems to think he can keep it secret by bullying reporters and MTA staff into silence.

UPDATE: The same mayoral spokesman who responded to my inquiry — emphasizing the mayor’s support for the opt-in Sunday metering program — emphasized the mayor’s opposition to evening hours in Matier and Ross’s article on the price hike on neighborhood parking permits: “The mayor hates the increases too, but we have to put it in perspective,” said Tony Winnicker, spokesman for Mayor Gavin Newsom. “We’ve held the line on expanding evening parking meter hours, and we’re trying to hold the line on further Muni service cuts, but $200 million in state cuts means nobody is going to be happy.”

UPDATE 2: Newsom told Rachel Gorden that “he personally doesn’t like the idea of Sunday meter operations and is adamantly against nighttime meters.” The mayor’s office clearly spins his position depending on the venue, but the facts are absolutely clear: Tough decisions are needed to save transit, and Newsom is not willing to make them.